This application and an application filed concurrently herewith and entitled "PORTABLE HAMMERMILL AND ATTACHED IN-LINE FEED TABLE," Ser. No. 573,025, are owned by a common assignee.
Although numerous types of hammermills are used in the agricultural industry, and many apparatus are widely marketed, there is a general desire for a smaller, compact, more efficient machine capable of performing all of the same feed grinding requirements generally accustomed to by the former, but with a better arrangement of elements and a more simple structure or construction.
For example, heretofore in the art, the hammermills fed the material to be processed directly into the side or center portion of a rotor or through a top opening therein or other downwardly directed chute or conveyor structure connected to the rotor. None, however, fed the material directly into the face of the rotor or the hammers by means of at least one pair of counter-rotating augers disposed in an inclined trough. Typical of some of the prior art hammermills are shown and described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 1,416,065; 2,501,911; 2,590,056; 2,927,740; 3,062,461; 3,101,759; 3,129,739; 3,436,028 and 3,771,733.
Many of such devices employ chain operated feed tables in contrast to the augered feed table described herein and forming a part of the present invention. Another device currently available in the trade is known as an Allied, "Tuffy" portable mill-mixer. This unit employs a triple auger feed table having three 4 inch augers which all rotate in the same direction and the augers feed the material into the central portion of the rotor. Such apparatus is manufactured by the Allied Farm Equipment Co. of Chicago, Ill. and St. Marys, Ontario, Canada.
Accordingly, it is a primary object of this invention to provide an improved hammermill apparatus having an augered feed table which feeds the material to be processed directly into the face of the rotor and the swinging hammers, the auger feed table being inclined at an acute angle with the feed table.
It is another object of the invention to provide a unique auger feed table, wherein at least one pair of augers is disposed side by side and counter rotate toward each other and toward the center of the feed table.
It is a further object of the invention to provide an apparatus having a grinding chamber and a twin auger feed table which feeds the material upwardly at an incline or acute angle into the hammermill.
It is yet a further object of the invention to provide a novel and improved hammermill having the advantageous characteristics mentioned in the preceding paragraphs, which is relatively simple in construction so as to be capable of economic manufacture by mass production techniques.
The invention accordingly consists in the features of construction, combinations of elements, and arrangements of parts, which will be exemplified in the construction hereinafter described, and of which the scope will be indicated by the appended claims.